Now here's an interesting little nugget Jeff Bezos didn't want you to know about when he introduced his new Kindle tablets: the Kindle Fire HD is ad-supported, and originally, you would not have been able to remove those advertisements from the device. Over the weekend, the company reversed this policy, allowing you to permanently remove the advertisements from your Fire HD for $15.

Isn't the whole point of buying the Kindle Fire to get an Amazon integrated environment? It isn't what I want for me, but I'm a developer. My cousin got one for his daughter, she loves it. It is exactly what he wanted for her. Ads are a big part of that environment.

I get the complaint. Amazon is telling us where we would probably like to spend our money. But the alternative is what exactly? Only read what friends recommend? Only watching what friends and family recommend? Pay for a newspaper and read the ads there instead.

As near as I can tell the ads are not intrusive and do not slow anything down. They are just on the lock screen. What do I care about the lock screen. If it has the date/time and a button to unlock, everything else is just a background image to me.

Unless my basic assumption is wrong and you have to wait x number of seconds or click through some ad to use your device. In that case I would say avoid it like the plague.